Libs rejoice: the Kroger era is over

Katharine Murphy -May 7, 2012

Illustration: Andrew Dyson.

WAGS in the Victorian Liberal Party refer to Michael Kroger as the Bamboo General. ''Bamboo'' refers to Kroger's penchant for dining at the Chinatown restaurant Bamboo House, Melbourne's canteen for the conservative elite. ''General'' refers to his penchant for giving orders, although these days, it's to a diminished army.

Harsher Kroger critics insist the Bamboo General's army isn't simply diminished - it's actually invisible. That tart observation is contrary to the conventional wisdom, which styles Kroger as one of those omniscient backroom players in professional politics, capable of moving pawns around on a chess board.

The Kroger mythology is considerable. His name is a brand synonymous with ''Victorian Liberal Party powerbroker''. There is the ''Kroger faction'', which in the 1980s and '90s pitted itself against the Kennett faction. That cleave, with its swaggering, vituperative battles of personality and ideology, defined the contours of Victorian conservative politics for a generation.

But progressively, time and events seem to have unmoored Kroger from tangible, demonstrable influence. Like all inexorable drifts, there are increments. A blood nose here, a falling-out there. The story takes time to crystallise.

But after the recent resolution of the Victorian Liberal Senate ticket for the next federal election, a definitive call is being made in political circles. The Kroger era is over.

Kroger's former wife, Helen Kroger, failed to hang onto the second spot on the Senate ticket despite his best efforts. The No. 2 spot went to Scott Ryan, guaranteeing his return to the chamber. Helen Kroger was bumped to the third spot, putting her future in doubt. (First spot went to shadow minister for disabilities and carers Mitch Fifield.)

The order of the ticket was resolved under new party rules designed to reduce the influence of factional players and democratise the preselection process. Let's call that a reaction against 20 years of bullfights.

As well as institutional moves to diminish the influence of the backroom generals, a couple of other milestones are notable in this ''generational shift''.

Party sources say Michael Kroger and Peter Costello - once a tag team - fell out around the time Costello took the decision to quit federal politics. Kroger was overly quick to back his preferred candidate for Costello's seat of Higgins - Jason Aldworth - acting, as one person puts it, ''like the body was already cold''. Costello was, apparently, Not Amused. (Let the record show that Costello's former adviser, Kelly O'Dwyer, won the day.)

The Costello coterie was further unimpressed by Kroger's implacable antipathy towards Ted Baillieu - who was the leader in Victoria, was the only viable prospect for leader in Victoria, and required support from the wider Liberal fraternity in order to achieve a change of government in Victoria.

And there was Kroger's vigorous championing of Malcolm Turnbull in Canberra. This was beyond the pale for some from the old group, given Costello and Turnbull were destined to be (and were in practice) mortal enemies: princes in competition for the grand prize. Some say Kroger set up support for Turnbull as a ''test of loyalty''. Whatever the merits of that as a course of action, events proved the shenanigans futile.

The sum of these various parts - the diminution of influence, the familial falling-outs - does seems to presage the end of an era, and potentially, the end of a Cold War. But what, if anything, does it mean for the Liberal Party?

Right now it seems to be in many minds about the costs and benefits of imposing more factional discipline at the federal level. The anti-Kroger camp asserts vigorously that the Victorian division is now in a post-factional period, but perhaps we are simply seeing one power structure being replaced with another.

The Liberal Party has to do a great deal better than it did in 2010 in convincing voters to back Tony Abbott, whatever Labor's parlous federal state. Queensland, Western Australia and, to a lesser degree, New South Wales swung for Abbott in 2010 - but not Victoria.

Abbott has been to Victoria 51 times since the last federal election: to the Melbourne Cup, the AFL grand final, the Australian Open, and his ''pollie pedal'' cut a swath through Victoria. But the Victorian Liberal Party lacks a dominant, Costello-like presence at the federal level to connect with voters in Melbourne and beyond - and balance perceptions that Abbott is, intrinsically, a bloke from Sydney, just off the beach, in his budgie smugglers, with the vague whiff of Sin City about him.

Costello had the presence and authority for a bit of deft product differentiation from John Howard (also archetypally Sydney, albeit of a different generation and timbre).

The Victorian Liberals' ''post-factional'' period has delivered a batch of super-talented young things: Kelly O'Dwyer, Josh Frydenberg, Alan Tudge, Dan Tehan. I suspect a future prime minister lurks in their ranks.

But Abbott will have to give some of these people a go in ministerial roles if the Victorian division is to replicate the days in Canberra of Costello, Peter Reith, Richard Alston, Michael Wooldridge and the Kemp brothers - or, back further, of those cut-through political figures called Malcolm Fraser and Robert Menzies.